Elliot Trinidad- Tuning the Blaseball Name Generator

Blaseball (2020-2023) was a massively multiplayer sports fan simulator that asked its online audience to follow a fictional, procedural baseball league's horror story across years -- as well as the hundreds of named digital outfielders who could die or spawn anew at a moment's notice!
Join Blaseball community manager & designer Elliot Trinidad in this practical retrospective about how a simple "first name, last name" character generator was able to illicit everything from obsession to controversy in the hands of a creative community. What do procedural character names say about your game's world? How did we tune our names to better highlight cultural diversity? And just what does it look like when seemingly small decisions get constant live feedback from an invested audience? Tune in to find out!

[@yusufkocabasoglu]

great talk